Mustafa Kamal critcises power price cut only for Punjab

KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) leader Mustafa Kamal on Saturday rebuked Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo Nawaz Sharif and Punjab government for announcing relief in electricity prices for Punjab only.

The PML-N supremo on Friday said the Punjab government had prepared a relief package by cutting the power tariff by Rs14 per unit for people consuming up to 500 units of electricity. 

"The relief will be given in the bills of August and September," he maintained.

The former prime minister said that the provincial government had cut its development fund to provide the relief in utility bills.

In response to the PML-N leader's announcement, Kamal said it was an unwarranted announcement as instead of Nawaz, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif should have provided relief for the entire country.

Hoping the PM will announce relief in power price for all parts of the country, the MQM-P leader rejected the decision to cut the price in Punjab only. “Price for the utility should be cut down by Rs20 a unit nationwide,” he demanded addressing a press conference in Karachi.

The announcement, exclusively shedding power price in Punjab, had ensued a feeling of despair in other regions, he said.

Meanwhile, Kamal demanded uniform electricity price throughout the country, presenting a solution for bringing the electricity price down.

"Instead of blocking the arteries, we presented the government a solution to resolve the issue of inflated electricity bills," the politician said.

He claimed Pakistan possessed electricity beyond its requirement as it had the ability to generate more than 45,000 megawatts electricity. However, he said, the country’s transmission lines had the capacity of merely 22-25,000 megawatts.

Summing up his suggestion for providing people relief, Kamal said the government should sit down and talk with the 30% local and 50% public independent power producers (IPPs) in this regard, keeping aside the 20% foreign IPPs initially, as they had international agreements.

“These IPPs have already made billions of rupees (in terms of charges for their services),” he said.

After that, the politician suggested, the government should sit with the foreign IPPs as well and talk to them about the prevailing situation.

He proposed privatisation of electricity distribution companies and giving licence to more companies in a region too.